The Perishers (Comic Strip) - TV Tropes The Perishers You need to login to do this. Get Known if you don't have an account Share WMG The Perishers was a long-running British newspaper comic strip, appearing in the Daily Mirror from about 1959 until its final cancellation in 2006. The strip was mostly written by Maurice Dodd, who also worked as an advertising copywriter. In actual fact, Dodd was neither the strip's creator, nor its original writer — the strip was jointly created by its original artist Dennis Collins, and the Daily Mirror's entertainments editor, while its first writer, Ben Witham got fired within weeks after the first few strips were regarded as dismally unfunny — but his name has always been the one most closely associated with the strip. Until 1983 it was drawn by Dennis Collins, in a highly detailed style which subsequent artists could never quite match. As of 2010 the Mirror is reprinting 1960s strips with Collins art and new colouring, somewhat squashed to fit a modern comic page and containing some updates to topical material - e.g., Maisie's references to "That nice Mr.

Wilson " are now directed to "That nice Mr. Cameron ". The strip features a group of urban schoolchildren and a dog. As such it is sometimes described as a British equivalent of Peanuts , although it has a very different art style and relies on quirkily British humour in the tradition of music hall and Spike Milligan (Charlie Brown and Snoopy were featured since the late 50s in the Daily Sketch and the Daily Mail since the 1970s). The Alcoholic : Tatty Oldbitt. Bad Liar : "Poor Girl", a kid who tries to plead poverty as an excuse for getting Wellington (who really is poor) to part with all his birthday presents. Never mind that she has a poor butler, maid, chauffeur etc. and wears a fur coat she got from the impoverished furriers. A Boy and His X : Wellington and Boot are a boy and his Old English Sheepdog. Cigar Chomper : Fiscal is always chomping on a chocolate cigar, as part of the general millionaire stereotype. Cloud Cuckoolander : Marlon and occasionally Boot - the latter frequently believed himself to be an 18th century Lord transformed into a dog by a vengeful gypsy.

Comic-Book Time : Lampshaded by Wellington in one New Year strip, when he notices that he and his friends never seem to get any older. Depending on the Artist : After Dennis Collins retired, Maurice Dodd drew the strip for over a decade, but it was obvious that his drawing skills weren't really anywhere near those of Collins. The third and final artist, Bill Mevin didn't quite pull off a perfect imitation of Collins, but it was a pretty good one nonetheless. The Ditz : Marlon. Free-Range Children : especially when they go on holiday without adult supervision. Garden Hose Squirt Surprise : One mid-60s had Wellington asking Maisie to inspect the end of a hose while he went to adjust the "hydro control valve". Soon afterward Maisie found him leaning against a wall, and being Genre Savvy assumed that as soon as she took his place the wall would fall on her. She did it anyway, "just to go along with the gag", and a lampppost fell on her instead . Hollywood Magnetism : There's a strip where Wellington is demonstrating a magnet to Marlon, and he turns it backward so it will repel things.

In reality, magnets will only repel other magnets, and only when their like poles are facing each other. It's Been Done : On one occasion Marlon took up inventing for a hobby. When his friends pointed out that his inventions (fire, the wheel and the horse and cart) had all been invented by other people, he wasn't worried because he invented them quicker and was therefore catching up. Minor Living Alone : Wellington lives alone in a squat with his dog, even managing to go to school with the other kids. Before moving into the squat, he and Boot lived in a section of concrete sewer pipe that had been left lying around in a closed builder's yard. No Communities Were Harmed : The kids lived in Croynge, which suggests a South London district modelled on Croydon and Penge. Once a Season : Once a year, the gang would go off to the beach for a holiday, and Boot the dog would wander off to peer into a particular rockpool to see if it still had crabs living in it. Cue a string of strips about the crabs, who had developed a religion based on the recurring phenomenon of the Eyeballs in the Sky.

Parental Abandonment / There Are No Adults : it is never made clear which. Parody Religion : The crabs have one, worshipping Boot on his regular visits, although most of their leaders are just in it for the money. Really Gets Around : Tatty Oldbitt, the Sailors' Friend . Ripped from the Headlines : Pretty rare, but Wellington and Boot moving into an abandoned railway station bulding is made possible by the fact that that nice Dr. Beeching had closed down the line it was on.note The Daily Mirror being a Labour-leaning paper, and the Beeching cuts being very unpopular with Labour and the trade union movement, this dig would doubtless reflect the readerships views. Rules of Orphan Economics : Mixture of Type 1 and Type 3 in Wellington's case. It's never quite explained how Wellington and Boot survive, but quite obvious they're poor and there isn't much food (except when Boot nicks the odd string of sausages) and that Wellington's friends give him handouts.

That's not to mention when Wellington tries to make money by trying to fob Marlon off with yet another go-kart (much to Maisie's dismay) or trying to remind the other kids it's his birthday (and presents should be given). Running Gag : The strips penned by Ben Witham generally had Boot making some remark about "these perishing kids," usually in the last panel. This was quickly dropped by Maurice Dodd when he took over the writing duties. It resurfaced in the title sequence to the animated series. Social Services Does Not Exist : it seems Wellington can live quite happily technically homeless without them interfering. He even goes to a school which doesn't check up on him. Possibly subverted when Wellington has to substitute crying out for the "Welfare lady!" instead of his "Mother!" (he doesn't have one). Speech Bubble : Baby Grumpling speaks in lower-case; Adolf Kilroy the Teutonic Tortoise speaks in Fraktur (German copperplate). Theme Naming : Wellington and his dog, Boot Those Two Guys : Fred the beetle and The Caterpillar. Thought Bubble Speech : used by the dogs, but not by the crabs or insects.

Trademark Favorite Food : Marlon's inch-thick ketchup sandwiches - possibly the only sandwich to have a blast radius. The Perishers | Albion British Comics Database Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia Share The Perishers, which for most of its lengthy run was created by writer Maurice Dodd and artist Dennis Collins (though its original writer was Ben Witham and towards the end, it was drawn first by Dodd after Collins's retirement in 1983, and then by Bill Mevin from 1992), began in the Daily Mirror on October 19th 1959 and ran until June 10th 2006, when the backlog of strips created by Dodd before his death some weeks previously finally ran out.

It principally revolved around a group of four children, Wellington (a philosophical and intellectual orphan who for most of the strip lives alone in a derelict railway station and whose sole income seems to come from making buggies and selling them to his friends), Marlon (an incredibly thick kid in a tracksuit who eats inch thick ketchup sandwiches which always squirt over the others when he bites into them, and who keeps inventing things which are either totally useless or have already been invented)), Maisie (a fearsome little girl who is obsessed with Marlon) and Baby Grumpling (Maisie's little brother, an aspiring criminal genius and the creator of the wormburger) as well as Wellington's old English sheepdog, Boot , who believes himself to be an English nobleman from the eighteenth century ensorcelled by a Gypsy wench (he should've bought the damn clothespegs).

The strip did, however, have numerous other recurring characters who would often take it over for days at a time, most notably the hirsute and unsanitary kid Aloysius "Dirty" McSquirty, his unseen cousin Worsoff (who lived in a sewer and spoke up to Dirty through drains), the lewd and coarse but very funny Crabs in the Rock Pool (whom Boot visited every year when the kids went to the seaside town of St. Moribunds on holiday, and who had built an entire religion around these annual apparances of "the Eyeballs in the Sky"), Boot's canine associates B.H Calcutta (failed) (a bloodhound who claimed to be a print journalist and whose catchphrase was "any news for the newshound?") and Tatty Oldbitt (a sex mad female Bassett hound) and fascistic would-be world conquering tortoise Adolph Kilroy and his two reluctant associates, a workshy socialist beetle named Fred and his chain smoking caterpillar friend.

Others included the kids' school friends Fiscal Yere (a rich kid who handed out chocolate cigars), Plain Jane (Maisie's rival) and Beryl Bogey (Maisie's musclebound henchperson) as well as New Baby (Grumpling's unwilling confidant, never seen except as a pram with a thought balloon above it) and Poor Girl, a quite obviously spoiled rich girl who would routinely try to con Wellington out of his (usually non-existent) Christmas and birthday presents by claiming to be collecting for the poor; namely, herself ("I'm poor, my butler's poor, my maid's poor..."). The kids lived in the town of Croynge (sometimes called Crunge), which was apparently a location in South London based on Croydon and Penge, but resembled an industrial Northern town in the 1950's. Much of the humour in the strip, which was extremely well written and often worked on several levels, was based on repetition, with certain scenarios being replayed with variations on an annual basis.

Wellington has, in fact, noticed by the strip's later days that each year is very similar to the previous year and that he and his friends never seem to age, though he never points this out to anyone else; this deconstruction of the comic strip medium is also apparent in other cases, such as the kids' yearly walk back from St. Moribunds after being thrown off the train, which always results in them being several weeks late home from school without anyone seeming to notice, a comment on the vagaries of comic strip time. The strip was hugely popular, spawning a TV cartoon series in the 1970's (which starred the late Leonard Rossiter as the voice of Boot) and a record album in 1980, as well as being reprinted in a series of bestselling books. The strip returned to the Daily Mirror as a series of reprints in February 2010. The Perishers Episode Guide -FilmFair | BCDB Other Studios : F : FilmFair : The Perishers The Perishers Episode Guide -FilmFair Created by Maurice Dodd and drawn by Dennis Collins, this cartoon was based on the popular comic strip featured in the Daily Mirror.

FilmFair Please give the Cartoon Series The Perishers a vote between 1 and five stars, with five stars being the best, 1 being a show you absolutely hate, and a three for an average show. This Series has been viewed 10 times this month, and 4,108 times total. The Perishers TV Episode Guide : The Wheeling And Dealing FilmFair London Productions... featuring Boot, Wellington, Marlon, Maisie, Baby Grumpling, BH The Wheeling And Dealing There have not yet been any votes for "The Wheeling And Dealing". Vote Now ! 21 She May Or She May Not FilmFair London Productions... featuring Boot, Wellington, Marlon, Maisie, Baby Grumpling, BH She May Or She May Not There have not yet been any votes for "She May Or She May Not". Vote Now ! 21 Noblesse Oblige featuring Boot, Wellington, Marlon, Maisie, Baby Grumpling, BH Noblesse Oblige There have not yet been any votes for "Noblesse Oblige". Vote Now ! 21 The War Games FilmFair London Productions...

featuring Boot, Wellington, Marlon, Maisie, Baby Grumpling, BH The War Games There have not yet been any votes for "The War Games". Vote Now ! 21 Well Blow Me Down FilmFair London Productions... featuring Boot, Wellington, Marlon, Maisie, Baby Grumpling, BH Well Blow Me Down There have not yet been any votes for "Well Blow Me Down". Vote Now ! 21 Bone Companions featuring Boot, Wellington, Marlon, Maisie, Baby Grumpling, BH Bone Companions There have not yet been any votes for "Bone Companions". Vote Now ! 21 The Rehabilitation Of BH (Calcutta) Failed FilmFair London Productions... featuring Boot, Wellington, Marlon, Maisie, Baby Grumpling, BH The Rehabilitation Of BH (Calcutta) Failed There have not yet been any votes for "The Rehabilitation Of BH (Calcutta) Failed". Vote Now !

21 The Eye Balls In The Sky featuring Boot, Wellington, Marlon, Maisie, Baby Grumpling, BH The Eye Balls In The Sky BCDB Rating: (4.7/5 stars from 2 users.) The Inch-thick Ketchup Sandwich FilmFair London Productions... featuring Boot, Wellington, Marlon, Maisie, Baby Grumpling, BH The Inch-thick Ketchup Sandwich There have not yet been any votes for "The Inch-thick Ketchup Sandwich". Vote Now ! 21 A Fool And His Money Aren't As Easily Parted As You Think FilmFair London Productions... featuring Boot, Wellington, Marlon, Maisie, Baby Grumpling, BH A Fool And His Money Aren't As Easily Parted As You Think There have not yet been any votes for "A Fool And His Money Aren't As Easily Parted As You Think". Vote Now ! 21 A Life from The Ocean Wave FilmFair London Productions... featuring Boot, Wellington, Marlon, Maisie, Baby Grumpling, BH A Life from The Ocean Wave There have not yet been any votes for "A Life from The Ocean Wave". Vote Now ! 21 A-Camping We Will Go FilmFair London Productions...

featuring Boot, Wellington, Marlon, Maisie, Baby Grumpling, BH A-Camping We Will Go There have not yet been any votes for "A-Camping We Will Go". Vote Now ! 21 How To Train The Family Dog FilmFair London Productions... featuring Boot, Wellington, Marlon, Maisie, Baby Grumpling, BH How To Train The Family Dog There have not yet been any votes for "How To Train The Family Dog". Vote Now ! 21 In The Cart FilmFair London Productions... featuring Boot, Wellington, Marlon, Maisie, Baby Grumpling, BH In The Cart There have not yet been any votes for "In The Cart". Vote Now ! 21 Look Before It Leaps FilmFair London Productions... featuring Boot, Wellington, Marlon, Maisie, Baby Grumpling, BH Look Before It Leaps There have not yet been any votes for "Look Before It Leaps". Vote Now ! 21 Magic Mirror The Perishers - Childrens TV | Jedi's Paradise The Perishers The Perishers is a 70’s Children’s TV cartoon whose characters started life in a comic strip in the Daily Mirror Newspaper in 1958.

It was the brainchild of its cartoon editor Bill Herbert. The Comic Strip wasn't an instant hit and initially the scripts were produced by Ben Witham and the characters were drawn by Dennis Collins. Maurice Dodd was drafted in to help, who sketched his scripts and the strip then went from strength to strength. It is still shown in the newspaper today. In 1978 FilmFair and Bill Melendez Productions teamed up to bring The Perishers to life on the small screen, in a cartoon series consisting of 20 episodes. The theme tune to this series (by Trevor Evan Jones) was very catchy and ends with Boot saying 'Perishing Kids!'. Story Wellington, Marlon, Maisie & Baby Grumpling are 4 children who hang about with each other. They like to go camping and to the seaside, but trouble is always around the corner when they start squabbling with each other. Wellington's dog, Boot, likes to come along and have fun, but always tries to stay away from anything that could be hard work. Now lets meet the gang. The Perishers Characters Wellington He is a very bossy little boy and always wants his own way and is an orphan.

He's always trying to get his dog, Boot, to do things, but Boot has other ideas (they are always battling against each other). He wears a deer stalker hat and a pair of Wellington Boots (hence his name). His best friend is Marlon, but he is always using him to do something for himself. He especially likes him when he is trying to sell one of his wooden buggies (go-karts), as this is Wellington's little sideline to make money. Marlon He's a bit slow (in the head) and likes to be pulled around on his buggy (he's easily lead). He likes buggies and does lots of Vroom!! Vroom!! noises and gets Maisie to push/pull him around in it (if he can persuade her to). To go for the complete look, he wears some overalls that look like the ones racing drivers wear (it even has a go fast stripe!). He is the inventor of the 'Inch Thick Ketchup Sandwich'. I would recommend that you stand well back when he bites into this, as people standing too close are covered in Tomato Ketchup. Also he has very smelly feet.

Boot Boot is an Old English Sheep Dog and always saying (or is it thinking to himself) 'By the Lord Harry'. He has no tail and is not fond of water, he especially hates baths. Sausages are a favourite of his. He loves to talk to himself in the mirror and admires himself. He thinks he's handsome and and has an ego the size of a planet. He thinks he is more intelligent than Wellington and doesn't do what he is told, which gets poor Wellington really frustrated. Boot even thinks he owns the house they live in, but Wellington is always trying to tell him otherwise. Boot is interested about what lives underwater, and when they all go to the seaside, he heads straight to the rock pools. Here he has become known as 'The Eyeballs in the Sky' by the crabs that live underwater, they are unsure what the Eyes are, maybe they're god? Its a shame Boot doesn't know this, as he would relish the chance to become anyone's god. Maisie She is the sister of Marlon and sounds a bit posh. She has become the self appointed girlfriend of Marlon, he never stood a chance!

Every once in a while, she has a go at ruling the World, but its a very difficult task! Once she had a hat like a duck, and all the others kept going Quack, Quack, Quack (which really upset her). But the final straw was when they all jumped in a duck pond to get away from a cow and some passing people threw bread for her to eat! Baby Grumpling He is the baby brother of Maisie. He especially likes to go around on his Space Hopper, the trouble is he flattens anything in his way, such as Wellington. Digging holes is one of his specialities too. He especially upsets Maisie when he puts insects in her underwear draw. If he doesn't get his own way, then he resorts to his final threat - "I'm going to tell my Mum!". BH He is an Indian dog (from the Army) that has no sense of smell and he is Boot's best friend. The Perishers T-Shirts - NONE The Perishers Omnibus book 1 | Now Read This!

The Perishers Omnibus book 1 Posted on By Maurice Dodd & Dennis Collins (Daily Mirror Books) ISBN: 0-85939-031-4 Although written almost entirely by Maurice Dodd throughout its 48 year history, the National Treasure that is (Are? Am?) The Perishers was actually created in 1957 by artist Dennis Collins, writer Bill Witham (who went on to huge success with the innocent everyman Useless Eustace) and cartoon editor Bill Herbert. The daily exploits of a bunch of typical kids was first published in the Manchester edition of the Daily Mirror in February 1958 but after only a couple of frankly mediocre months the wacky adventures of Maisie and Marlon were withdrawn and retooled. Jack-of-all-trades, budding artist and advertising whiz-kid Dodd was approached by ex-paratroop service comrade and drinking buddy Herbert and promptly jumped at the chance to reinvent the characters in what was a meandering but beautifully illustrated all-ages feature simply stuffed with untapped potential.

Drawing on his own life (he would describe it as shamelessly pilfering) Dodd created a plethora of new characters, animal and human – although with this strip the distinctions are loose and hard to defend – and rescued an early 1958 casualty in the unkempt and ill-maintained person of laconic orphan and philosophical dilettante Wellington: a street urchin who lived on his wits but still attended school and endured all the daily trials and indignities of British youth. Relaunched in October 1959 in the London and national editions, the revamped strip quickly caught on and became a morning mainstay for generations of Britons, blending slapstick and surreal comedy with naive charm, miniaturised modern romantic melodramas (Maisie loves Marlon, Marlon loves fashion and “inventing” and Wellington loves sausages), liberally laced with sardonic cultural commentary – especially a wonderfully twisted faux misperception of contemporary politics and the burgeoning advertising and commercial media.

Even in its earliest days the strip was superbly illustrated, conjuring up in a few judicious lines and cannily applied tones a communal urban wonderland we all knew as kids: a familiar post-war wonderland of shops and streets, building sites and overpasses, alleys and parks and fields where we could get on with our adventures and no adults could interfere or spoil the fun. The major protagonists of the series are Wellington and Boot, his old English Sheepdog (sort of: the wily, hairy chancer and raconteur considers himself a Manorial Milord sufferin’ under the curse of a Gypsy wench). They are ably unsupported by the formidable Maisie, a thoroughly modern miss torn between her passion for the boy of her dreams, sweets, and unrelenting violence and the aforementioned Marlon himself. Cool, suave and debonair are just three of the words he doesn’t know the meaning of, but lots of the girls at school fancy him anyway.

If he grows up he wants to be a brain surgeon or a bloke wot goes down sewers in great big gumboots… Being on his own Wellington takes every opportunity to support himself with sordid scavenging and shoddy schemes –usually involving selling poorly constructed carts and buggies to Marlon who far more money than sense: to be honest Marlon has more noses than sense… Maisie is a shy beautiful maiden waiting for true beloved to sweep her off her feet – and if he doesn’t she gives him a thorough bashing up and nicks his sweets… Other unreasonable regulars introduced here include Baby Grumplin’ – Maisie’s toddler brother and a diabolical force of nature, Plain Jane – a girl who asks too many questions and the dapper Fiscal Yere, smugly complacent go-getting son of a millionaire and another occasional sucker for Wellington’s automotive inexpertise. On the anthropomorphic animal front the extremely erudite Boot regularly encounters stroppy ducks, militant squirrels, socialist revolutionary Fred the Beetle and his long-suffering wife Ethel, Asiatic bloodhound journalist B.H.

Calcutta (Failed) and latterly, a nicotine-addicted caterpillar who stunted his growth and became Fred’s inseparable comrade in the struggle against canine oppression but implacable rival for any food or dog-ends the Bolshevistic bugs might find… Every day notable events in this madcap melange include Wellington gentrifying out of the large concrete pipe that he used to live in to take up residence in an old railway station abandoned after the Beeching Cuts decimated the train infrastructure and the first couple of kids-only, unaccompanied camping holidays to the seaside (such innocent times) to encounter sun, surf and the rock-pool crabs who worshipped the uncannily canine “Eyeballs in the Sky” which annually manifest in their isolated “Pooliverse”… Utterly English, fabulously fantastical and resoundingly working-class, the strip generated 30 collections between 1963 -1990, 4 Big Little Books, 5 novels and 2 annuals as well as an audio record and an immensely successful animated TV series.

The tome under review here was released in 1974; the first of a series of extra-sized recapitulations, and containing most of the contents of the first four Perishers collections (covering 1959-1965) and superbly sets the scene for newcomers with a glorious extravaganza of enchanting fun and frolics, liberally annotated by Dodd himself. Dennis Collins magnificently and hilariously illustrated the feature until his retirement in 1983, after which Dodd himself took up the pens and brushes. Eventually artist Bill Melvin took over the art chores whilst Dodd scripted until his until death in 2006. Once the backlog of material was exhausted The Perishers finished on June 10th 2006. Last year The Mirror began reprinting classic sequences of the strip to the general approval of everyone, so perhaps it’s not too much to hope that eventually all the classic collections will once more be freshly available to one and all… © 1974 IPC Newspapers Limited.

The Perishers The Perishers , written by Maurice Dodd , drawn by Dennis Collins , and they have appeared in Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper since the 1960s at least. Perhaps because this is a British strip, searching the internet turns up very little information about it. Its debt to Peanuts seems indisputable, and certainly when Charles Schultz died, Maurice Dodd acknowledged in his tribute that he had had to modify his original strip to avoid too close a likeness to Peanuts . But however derivative the initial inspiration may have been, the tone of voice of the British strip is quite distinct from that of its American equivalent. The title itself makes this clear: the term "perisher", according to Chambers, is a slang expression for "a reprehensible or annoying person", a rather old-fashioned word even when the strip was young, but often used in a tone of irritated affection (or affectionate irritation). A feature which marks the British strip off from the American version is its refusal to view the children with any sentimentality whatsoever. This strip catches the core personnel of the strip at the end of the school day, and gives a characteristic sample of its humour.

The running gag is that Baby Grumpling, accustomed to waiting for the older children outside the school railings, interprets their time "behind bars" as incarceration, and greets their release with exaggerated joy. In this particular example, the humour of this misunderstanding is pointed out by piling on slang expressions for imprisonment and escape: Wellington, the intellectual, leads the way "We are not crashin' out or makin' a break", while Maisie makes sure of the last word, for the benefit of any reader still unsure what the joke is: "We have not been doin' porridge." There is little for Marlon to do here but assent, but another of the series' running gags places him at centre stage: Wellington plays the straight man, allowing the other three to express their personalities and backgrounds through the sandwiches they have brought to school in their packed lunch.

Maisie is in many ways an old-fashioned girl, and her unappetising combination of "drippin' and banana" indulges two treats of a generation earlier (dripping, the fat saved from roast meat and spread on bread, and bananas, a variety of fruit notoriously unavailable in war-time Britain: but this strip bears a 1971 copyright!). The punningly named Fiscal Yere, one of the cast's regular "guest stars", and usually drawn "smoking" a chocolate cigar as a sign of his family's extreme wealth, here transforms that symbol of affluence into sandwiches. And Marlon, whose obtuseness more often makes him the butt of the punchlines, here gets the last word, as he yet again produces his inch-thick tomato-ketchup sandwiches, which he persists in regarding as a foodstuff rather than an offensive weapon, despite the impossibility of biting into them without splattering all in the vicinity with gore. Dim though Marlon is, Maisie finds him irresistible, and pursues him relentlessly; sometimes her passion is the whole point of the strip, sometimes it merely serves to keep the characters in motion as they deliver their stand-up routines.

Here the characters race down the steps from the metal bridge, past the front door with the milk bottles and down to the arch at the end of the street, through a continuous townscape in which the three panel frames divide not space but time, setting the rhythm which allows the joke maximum effect: "Just what kind of idiot are you going to grow up to be?" is treated by Marlon not as rhetoric, but as a serious career choice. It is a sign of the innate conservatism of the strip that Maisie, unstoppable in her determination to be May Queen, dreams of the future only in terms of romance, her only toy a doll's pram. Marlon has professional ambitions: "I'm goin' back to my original plan of bein' a brain surgeon. Or maybe a bloke wot goes down sewers in big rubber boots." "Oh, not that again. Marlon, I don't wish to discourage you, goodness knows, but have you thought this thing through. Do you realise the trainin', the practice, the amount of strugglin' that lies ahead?" "Crumbs, Maisie, give me a bit of credit, do.

I bet I could learn to get them boots on in a matter of weeks." By 1978, The Perishers had registered the existence of feminism, but only in the terrifying person of Beryl Bogey "the black-belt-all-in-free-style liberated women's netball champion" recruited by Maisie to bring into line anyone considering voting for her rival as May Queen. Sometimes Maisie is shown looking after her younger brother, Baby Grumpling: whose conviction that all children spend their days in prison (like his identification of the old man in the red coat - who knows whether children have been naughty or nice, and rewards them accordingly - as "old Joe Stalin") must betray a guilty conscience. His favourite (or perhaps simply most visual) vice is digging holes in the garden, but he is endlessly creative in finding others.

In one strip he kneels by his bedside, all curly hair and striped pyjamas, and prays, as he always speaks, in lower-case lettering: "dear god i haven't told any fibs and i haven't pinched any of maisie's sweets and i haven't put frozen peas in dad's gumboots and i haven't shaved the cat i know i asked you to make me a good boy, but this is ridiculous " But the heart of the group is the odd couple formed by Wellington, usually seen wearing rubber Wellington boots in a visual repetition of the verbal joke which links his name to that of Boot, his Old English Sheepdog. The boy and his dog are the undeniable equivalent of Peanuts' Charlie Brown and Snoopy. Like Charlie Brown, Wellington is in some ways the odd-man-out in his group. For a start, he is an intellectual, with a taste for long words and philosophical meditations. His home life is also unusual; he and Boot live alone together in a disused railway station.

Having no adults to support him, Wellington is obliged to make his own living, which he does by various dubious means, including the manufacture and sale of "buggies", mock racing cars which the ever-gullible Marlon can usually be persuaded to buy. Although Wellington periodically tries to show Boot how to use a broom, the dog is too intelligent to be caught in this way, and domestic duties in house and garden invariably fall to Wellington: Visually, Wellington's gardening methods may seem unconventional, but verbally, they are normal enough: he is pruning his garden. Here again is the delight in the ambiguities of language which characterises The Perishers , and may go some way to explain the strip's failure to conquer the world.

The images, too, give clues about the characters and setting which might be opaque to someone from another time or place: the building, around one corner of which Boot can be seen peering nervously, displays architectural details which mark it unmistakably as a (disused) railway station; Maisie, in her black tights, gym slip and straw hat, not to mention her beauty spot, looks like a refugee from St Trinians, a schoolgirl a decade older than herself, and from a decade further into the past. Once a year, the group take a summer holiday. This is usually preceded by a discussion of the options, including some baroque variation on the theme of an invented event, the rhubarb thrashing championships. The earliest of these are simple enough: Wellington is disinclined to attend because "last year the rhubarb fought back!", but become more elaborate: - Goin' to the rhubarb-thrashin' championships this year? - No. - Still peeved about the bloke with two heads? - It's not that so much... ...But who stands a chance with all those ten-foot dwarfs?

But each year, the holiday is represented by the same images: the children pitch their tent in a field and play on the beach. Sometimes the crowd of holidaymakers provides the excuse for a joke, but more often the Perishers have the place to themselves. Baby Grumpling indulges in his favourite occupation of digging holes (occasionally burying Marlon completely) while the older children splash in the sea, and Boot shows an adult's reluctance to enter the cold water: Wellington is a mixture of hyperactive six year old and respectful guardian of tradition, as he rushes down to the sea in his old-fashioned ("it belonged to my great-grandfather") swimming costume, and the deerstalker hat which he so rarely removes. Boot's highly literate thoughts reveal that his initial surrender to this carefree mood: "Devil may care, come what may, following with a merry laugh even into the jaws of... the ocean?" is followed by a comic anti-climax. For once, the pair seem not so much to echo Peanuts as to prefigure Calvin and Hobbes.

Boot's vocabulary may be unexpected in a dog, but it is entirely consistent with the romantic image of the eighteenth century rake, an English Milord placed under an enchantment by a slighted gypsy. For Boot, like Snoopy, had a previous life in which he was not a dog, and from time to time reminisces about his former life. "Can you really recall your mother from the days when you were an English Milor'?" asks his friend B.H. (Calcutta) failed. "There's something there if I grope for it," replies Boot: "I see pictures...Candlelight... A figure at the gaming table... A tinkling laugh, flashing eyes (Oh, those eyes)... The quiver of lace, the flutter of a frilled fan... Or was that Uncle Boris?" The humour here operates on three levels: at its simplest, the gag works as a one-liner; it feeds into the long-term characterisation of Boot; and the counterpoint of words and images also plays its part. This glimpse of a more elegant past gains added piquancy by images which give the dialogue, and some very human body-language, to a dog, addressing another dog against a backdrop of a heap of scrap cars.

To one small group of characters, Boot is even more than human. Each year on his holidays, while the children swim, he strolls along the beach, peering into rock pools: Unknown to Boot, the crabs in one particular pool have constructed an entire religion around his annual appearance. It is not an attractive creed; its adherents are always ready to panic, to divide into warring factions, and to make bad puns (the example quoted, "In times like these we should think ourselves lucky to have a woof over our heads", is one of the better ones). In fact, the crabs are among the least sympathetic creatures in the strip, though not quite as repellent as Kilroy the tortoise (who speaks in Gothic script and bears an uncanny resemblance to Adolf Hitler) or the beetle and grub who often accompany him. These latter appear to be intended to represent the forces of socialism, being cowardly, workshy and given to singing The Red Flag - well, how about one of those chopper bikes? - Don't be silly, Baby Grumpling. - would you consider a box of black magic? - No, Baby Grumpling. - could i have an ice lolly? - Well, all right...

I'll tell Maisie to get you one when she goes up the High Street. - when it comes to negociatin', that vic feather's got nothin' on me. Vic Feather, like Black Magic chocolates, is simply a brand name; it invites the same laughter of recognition, and dates the strip as surely, as Baby Grumpling's Christmas present: In 1973, or thereabouts, the toy that all children wanted for Christmas was a space hopper, a large orange bouncy ball, with "ears" that you could cling to as you rode around on your space hopper; and Baby Grumpling had one which defied gravity and rode roughshod over any opposition; it careered through a sequence of visual gags, culminating in what looked like the entire cast of the strip bouncing along out of control until they encountered Wellington in his new roller skates - an encounter which is probably best left to the imagination. It would be possible to continue indefinitely in this vein, pointing out the beauties of over a decade of daily strips, glossing over the inevitable repetitions and signs of age, praising the wordplay here, the intricately mapped street layout there and the sheer creative silliness of that joke.

The Perishers may never have made it big in the United States, despite the efforts of their fan, Rod McKuen - but they were published in Dutch . They also appeared on BBC television, in an animated series whose best feature was probably the voice given to Boot by the perfectly-cast Leonard Rossiter. There was even a Perishers scans_daily | More UK Daily Comic Strips - The Perishers Bringing the crack since December 2003 More UK Daily Comic Strips - The Perishers scans_daily Ok, here's a question for you. What daily comic strip am I describing. The main characters are all children, there's a young boy who owns a dog (whose thoughts we hear), there's a young girl who has a very forthright and overbearing manner, a boy who she constantly pursues despite his unwillingness to go out with her, and her younger brother who quite often is the most sensible of the lot. well, it's obvious from the title of this post that, it's not Peanuts, but "The Perishers", a british comic strip written by Maurice Dodd which started in the late 50's and ran until his death until 2006.

It was drawn initially by Dodd, then by Denis Collins, and after Collins retirement Dodd took over again, until Bill Melvin took over the art duties until the end of the strip. Despite it's superficial similarities to Peanuts, the characters in Perishers are of a lower class, and there's a less sentimentality about the writing. As an introduction to the characters, I can do no better than let the author introduce them. At the beginning of each collection there were 3 pages of introduction Boot the dog, believed he was actually a human Lord, who had been turned into a dog by a gypsy Masie was always pursuing Marlon, despite his total lack of interest One of the things I like about the strip is the detail in the background. Many of the strips were polyptychs, where the background of the whole strip was one continuous image, and the characters moved from one panel to the next, as seen in these 2 examples below I could post a lot of different strips, there are many recurring characters (my favourite is Fiscal Yere, whose father is a millionaire and who is usually seen with a chocolate cigar), but for this post, i'll concentrate on perhaps the most well known part of the strip which occured every summer.

The Perishers took the kids off on holiday to the seaside, whereupon Boot would wander off and take a look in a rockpool to observe the crabs that lived there. Unbeknown to him, these crabs had made a religion out of the annual appearance of "The Eyeballs in the Sky". Here is a full selection of strips from one of those visits (taken from one of the few collections to feature the strips coloured). Current Location: newcastle, uk

Question: Who created the cartoon strip “The Perishers”?
Answer: Maurice Dodd